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Page v - ... avoiding their faults, obscurities and difficulties. The material and the form, or the dictionary and the grammar, call upon different mental faculties. One's stock of words is retained by exercise of the memory. Therefore the radicals or root-words were generally so chosen by him from existing languages, that the greatest number of persons might have the fewest unfamiliar words to memorize. Since English is spoken as a mother-tongue by more millions than any other language he took from it more...

Page 26 - The house built on a rock, dom pebumol su klif. If we turn the sentence into the activ form it will be clearer. The house which we see in the distance. The house which some one has built (not is building) on a rock. There is another form of the participle, slightly differing from the future, and having the augment 6 instead of o. Its meaning is that which must or ought to do something, or that which must or ought to be done.

Page vi - ... country, as a rule, its popularization has immediately followed the publication of a grammar peculiarly suited to its people. Prof. Kerckhoffs, some months ago, estimated the number of persons who have studied VolapUk at 210,000. This may be somewhat too high, but the number is certainly very large. In Vienna alone, the classes during the winter of 1886-7 were attended by 2,500 students. 138 societies for its cultivation have been organized in different places. Eleven periodicals are now published,...

Page 2 - ... be. o as in go. 6 as in word, sz'r. u as in rude, rood. ii has nothing like it in English. The lips being protruded as if to say u (oo), try to say i (ee). Some English words spelt, as nearly as possible, in Volapuk letters : A public functionary, coc.

Page 28 - ... seldom put a verb, unless an auxiliary, before the subject. We use, instead, the emphatic form with do. You go. Do you go ? instead of Go you ? He speaks. Does he speak ? In Volapiik the sign of the question is the syllable li, generally placed either before or after the verb and united to it by a hyphen. The accent of the verb is unchanged. Li should not be placed after the verb when this would bring two 1's or three consonants together, as li-binoms ? not binomsli?

Page vi - PuertoRico, Stockholm, Aabybro (Denmark), and Antwerp, the youngest being four months old, and the oldest, six years. Most of these contain articles in the language of the country, as well as in Volapuk; but three of them, one being a humorous paper, are exclusively in Volapuk.